This disclosure relates generally to online systems, and more specifically to inferring characteristics of online system users from location data of the users.
Online systems, such as social networking systems, allow users to connect to and to communicate with other users of the online system. Users may create profiles on an online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Online systems allow users to easily communicate and to share content with other online system users by providing content to an online system for presentation to other users thereof. To provide a more engaging experience to a user, online systems may recommend content to the user based on the user's interest. Although users may provide interests and other information about themselves as part of a user profile, such profiles are generally incomplete. In other words, user profiles do not contain an exhaustive list of all of a user's interests and activities. As a result of an incomplete user profile, the online system may fail to recommend content to the user that the user would find interesting. Thus, reliance on user-provided information for user profiles may result in missed opportunities to provide relevant content items to online system users.